Ninety-Nine Trope Subversions And A Deckchair Party
by NothingPretentious
Summary: Harry Potter and friends kick back and relax at the First Annual Post-Voldemort Party And Jamboree. What did Bill Weasley refer to as his "Rod of Wonder"? Where is Crabbe Castle? How did Voldemort get an army of steampunk ice giants? Who is Albus Baker? What does Hermione need the chloroform for? Why is Ginny a lich? Get ready for none of these questions, and more, to be answered.


It was a good day.

It was a good, brilliantly sunny day.

Music jangled through Hogsmeade Town Square, where Hogwarts students, Aurors, and witches and wizards of all shapes and sizes lounged in deckchairs, talking and laughing amongst themselves. Magically-enhanced instruments tootled and yowled dozens of times as many notes as they should have been able to while still maintaining a melody, so that the individual notes died and piled up in an ornate structure of their own like coral forming slowly from tiny polyps.

The meandering reef of riffs ruffled the riff-raffish, characteristically tousled black hair of Harry Potter, then moved on to tickle the freckled nose of Ron Weasley. The latter closed his eyes and raised a bottle to his mouth, sighing in pleasure.

"Bloody good luck getting the only wizard band in existence to play here, huh?"

"You said it, mate."

Harry nodded amiably from his own gold-and-red deckchair, listening to the Weird Sisters playing in the distance. He looked out across the First Annual Post-Voldemort Party And Jamboree splayed out around them over the thronged cobblestones.

They had all gathered around the Statue of Secrecy, a granite edifice which dominated Hogsmeade Square. The statue depicted Merlin looking shifty and holding a finger to his lips. Anyone who looked at it was magically filled with national pride and compelled to hide (poorly) from muggles.

Harry lifted his beer in a little salute to the old stone bugger, and automatically suppressed the compulsion to dress in a hard hat, anorak and fluorescent clogs that stirred in his heart when he met its granite gaze.

To the left of their little posse, Penelope Clearwater was nodding along to the tsunami of chords from the musicians, ignoring Arabella Figg's blow-by-blow account of how she had finished Voldemort's dark lieutenant, Lestrange. The elderly squib had really come into her own when she taught Defence Against The Dark Arts this year.

To their right, Lavender Brown was talking animatedly to Colin Creevey and the Patil twins about their graduation plan to open a combined tannery – leather goods store – bagel wagon.

Opposite, Madam Meowmers Hooch was dancing a jig with the normally-dour Theodore Nott. There was some love-on-the-battlefield backstory there that Harry wasn't sure he wanted to know.

Everyone was in shorts enjoying the typically clement Scottish weather, except for Draco Malfoy, who lounged with his parents and few surviving Slytherin chums in his ubiquitous leather pants. Oh, and Percy Weasley, who had apparently missed an important memo and so was standing in the lee of the Statue of Secrecy, frantically trying to transfigure his toga and laurel wreath into something more fitting.

It was a sunny day; it was a good day to be alive.

"I can hardly believe it's all over," Hermione said. She had barely stopped beaming for the last two days.

Harry smiled back at her. "Yeah. Everything back to normal, huh?"

He sent Ron a piercing look. "Well, I've been having Significant Dreams," the boy admitted, flushing. "But I think they're about this year's Yule Ball, you know, the one we have every year, rather than about You-Know-Who."

Harry took a long swig from his Proudfoot's Old Stout, considering this. He was pretty damn sure Voldemort was dead for good now. Sure, they'd been blindsided on that front before, but in this case he was pretty sure the Dark Dude wouldn't be able to return from the grave. Not when the grave in question was simultaneously encased in concrete in a German Autobahn, in an extradimensional space under Fidelius, submerged in a bunyip pond in darkest Australia, in the middle of a hundred-acre stretch of the Forbidden Forest upon which nothing would grow again, in the belly of the Hogwarts giant squid, and the dozen other places they had left burnt remains of the Dark Lord and his soul jars.

The final battle had been pretty intense.

You really had to be there.

(Harry happened to know that Luna was currently wearing a stylish thong transfigured from Voldemort's left kidney, too.)

He shook his head, idly trying to recreate their path to victory like the edifice of gossamer and dandelion fluff and sheer dumb luck it had been.

Maybe it had started when he'd been polite to a Gringotts goblin that one time, and the bankers had written him that incredibly helpful letter telling him all about his hundreds of other bank vaults apart from what it turned out had been his trust fund; most of them unfairly concealed from the then eleven-year-old boy by various trustworthy authority figures, like Hagrid and Scrimgeour and Uncle Algie Longbottom.

He paused to exchanged nods with a passing seventh-year Ravenclaw. He didn't recognise the girl, but she was obviously Ravenclaw because most of her uniform was blue. "Only suckers wear black," Ron echoed his thoughts, as the redhead checked out that fine Ravenclaw booty.

Booty, Gringotts... Oh yes. There'd been the whole smuggler's gold thing, and that bit of nastiness with the estate tax, and the invention of the _Mobilidebt_ spell, and Harry was fairly sure he'd ended up poorer than when he started. But along the way, he'd had a little spending binge, most of it going towards the bottomless trunk.

They were all the rage, as every schoolboy knew, and Harry had made the logical choice and sought out the absolute top of the line when it came to trunks that were bottomless and bigger on the inside – this one was so much bigger, and so bottomlessful, in fact, that it contained nothing more than a yawing, howling abyss; a chasm from which no light escaped. The rumble of distant earthquakes could be heard deep in its leviathan belly, and from the horrid reaches within would frequently stir forth of its own volition a cold, persistent breeze like the breath of Hades.

He and Ron and Hermione and sometimes Neville and Ginny had ventured inside the trunk on weekends and study periods, fighting the monsters that lived there and looting their bodies for the ephemeral golden bottles inexplicably labelled "wizard XP". This had been instrumental to their fight and eventual victory against Voldemort.

There had been no single key turning point in the war, but it certainly helped when Neville levelled up enough to learn Force Choke. Along the way they had also learned that Ron's animagus form was an ageing publican named Bruce, and Harry had unlocked his metamorphamagus powers, although for some reason he could only take on the features of the person he'd most recently goosed.

By the fiftieth time they had walked down the weathered obsidian steps of Harry's trunk past his piled school robes, spare quills and Backstreet Boys posters, through the echoing archway that would eventually take them to Meta-Acheron, Seventh Plane Of The Wretched And Lost, they'd all become a little bit badass.

Hermione's magical core in particular was over nine thousand, and she'd developed a clever trick with a vial of chloroform and a secret passage from the shared Head Boy and Head Girl dormitory to the Headmaster's Office that let her use Phoenix Down at will. She'd saved their lives on the Horcrux hunt innumerable times.

Harry (having put a bunch of points into dual-wielding) was using two wands at once, for maximum effect. Ron had taken the idea a step further, tying a bunch together to make a completely unwieldy but terrifyingly effective "wand shotgun". This he persisted in referring to as his "Rod Of Wonder", having heard his brother Bill refer to something else by the same name while talking to a girl, and not realising the context.

Nobody had really agreed with Ginny's decision to become a lich, and there'd been a lot of Words Said between them, but nobody who had seen her smiting Voldemort's army of steampunk ice giants could deny that she'd been effective on the battlefield.

Harry frowned, trying to work out how he felt now about the younger redhead. She'd left in search of a bathroom – apparently knocking back five beers in a row had consequences even for the undead – but five minutes ago she had been sitting in the deckchair across from him, now somewhat more skeletal than lithe, and heavily laden in golden torc and grave goods. Still _smoking_ hot, though. Was the 'undead monstrosity' bit really a big deal? As Ravenclaw's riddle door had once put it to him: Should he hit it, or should he quit it?

Hermione interrupted his musings with a finger pointed a mite unsteadily towards the dancing and increasingly unclad crowd across from them.

"Is that Dennis Creevey there with the video camera?"

"No, it's Albus," Luna Lovegood observed from her deckchair next to Ginny's. "Albus Baker – no relation to the Headmaster." The strange, silver-eyed girl's claim was reliable, of course, being a seer. Not the future, though, nobody could do that – she just had _really good_ eyesight.

"Dennis is the one next to him. Mmmm, look how buff he got from all that Quidditch practise."

Harry ignored the bit where the blonde had felt the need to clarify that two people sharing a _first_ name were not actually related. Luna was good people. "Remember that Death Eater also called Ron?" he reminisced. "Now _that_ was briefly confusing!"

Everyone around him laughed, recollecting, except Ron, who frowned and flung his beer bottle back over his shoulder, reaching for another. "Aww, these're getting warm. What's that spell for keeping things chilled? _Freezerburnio_? _Snowflakius_? _Mobilientropy_?"

Hermione flicked her wand at the burlap sack of bottles they'd liberated from the Hog's Head while Aberforth had been celebrating upstairs by doing the bedsheet two-step with the notorious weregoat, Madam Bones.

"Honestly, Ron. _Maximised Persistent Fiendfyre Energy Substitution: Cold_," Hermione incanted. "That should do it," she added, as a towering hydra of ice incarnate rose above them, its prismatic hide kaleidoscopically scattering every ray of sunlight that fell across the town.

"Oh, you finally got it to do something useful." Ron rolled his eyes.

"Hey!"

"Remember when you used _Energy Substitution: Sonic_ that time? All those wolf-whistling wyrms and wyverns?"

"I hear the Ministry's almost rebuilt," Hermione responded defensively, smiling at a portly couple dressed only in daisy chains who were waving vigorously as they passed.

"Sod them either way," Harry groaned. "The pricks always did more harm than good. I can't believe I had to seize control of the Wizengamot with my hundred-and-thirteen Inherited Ancestral Seats just to get my parents' will finally unsealed and executed."

"It all worked out in the end," said Hermione tactfully. Everyone knew Harry had a bit of a Thing about his parents' will, even though it had been mainly concerned with the disposition of a fine Winchester dining suite that had been in the Evans family for years, and was a bit of a moot point since Voldemort blew it to smithereens when he murdered them.

"Don't forget how we didn't hear about the Ministry's secret Marriage Law until sixth year," Ron said, receiving a chorus of groans.

_Yeah, that one was a doozy_, Harry thought. The Purebloods had been breeding out of control, of course – one only had to look at the Malfoy family, with Draco's twenty squib brothers and sisters who attended an expensive boarding school in Switzerland, to realise that. So some bright spark in the early days of the Fudge administration had decided to forbid all marriages before the age of sixty, unless the witch or wizard in question had an arranged marriage. That in turn meant that every single parent in magical Britain had taken the loophole, and every single student in his cohort had one or more marriages on the books from the day they were born.

This was less sinister and terrible than it seemed, because there was no possible way to enforce such a bizarre contract totally against the prevailing social mores of at least the past two centuries. Harry hadn't heard of a single person who'd followed up on it.

Harry raised his beer in a silent toast to his own supposed future spouse, Mary-Susan Ellen Lou Elena Gryffindor, wishing her good luck in every endeavour (not least the wrist strain she'd surely suffer signing her own name), and hoping fervently he wouldn't ever meet her.

Speaking of Draco Score-Sqibling Malfoy, though... Harry squinted across at the pallid boy, remembering the time he framed Harry for arson and all his friends turned against him and he went to Azkaban. Luckily for the Boy Who Lived, people had pretty quickly realised Hogwarts was (a) still standing, probably because it was (b) made of stone? That had been a right mess, and it hadn't earned Draco any points in Harry's books. Although it _had_ given him a fortuitous opportunity to research the Soul Bond – a type of glue that Dementors naturally secreted, which stuck harder than Neville's blood to the bottom of a cauldron, and which Harry had ended up using in combination with a mallet, a rope, and a big box of Weasley Discount Novelty Squirrels to trap and kill Nagini.

Draco was currently lounging in a silk deckchair, wearing his trademark monocle and drinking a martini. He seemed to be telling a story about a frog, a weather balloon, and a tea service that had (crucially) turned out to be made of goblin-silver. His idiot friends were agog, and his aristocratic French parents were listening in amusement as they reclined in their made-to-fit deckchairs, smoking fine cheroots. Harry had been slightly let down to learn that Lucius Malfoy's pimp cane did not serve as his wand or conceal a fencing blade; rather, it was a very long and ornate cigarette holder, designed to outsize his wife's in the spirit of friendly, or rather viciously and lovelessly passive-aggressive, competition.

Goyle was holding an acoustic guitar enchanted to play Wonderwall, and had so far resisted three attempts to take it off him. As Harry watched, he exclaimed "I can't believe it, Draco! You spent all that time at that totally gnarly muggle carnival chasing down one measly balloon, and it turned out at the end that the frog wasn't even Tracey's? Hahahaha! But I mean like yolo, right?" and other behaviours both incongruous and blatantly anachronistic.

Harry waved his finger at the offending instrument, muttering the powerful telekinetic incantation, "_Habeascorpus._" The guitar shot off into the sky and disappeared, to reappear unlabelled in an evidence locker at the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.

He ignored Goyle's indignant howl and tried to focus, through a happy tipsy blur, on Neville and Luna's argument about whether Gabrielle Delacour was "only faking a French accent to pull birds". Fleur's little sister had recently undergone normal Veela accelerated pubescence, meaning she was now a hundred and eleven in human years. She had nodded off in a deckchair nearby with a heavy tartan blanket and walking sticks crossed over her legs.

"Yeah, but I hear a lot of Yanks are into-" Neville lost his train of thought as Transfiguration Mistress and ex-Auror Minerva Hardcastle McGonnnagal stumbled past, a pint glass in each hand, chanting something in her impenetrable Irish brogue. "Sheesh. I-" he stopped again as Snape meandered after her, and seemed to catch sight of their little crew.

Harry sighed and flicked his wand. "_Mobilibibonius_." A passed-out Terry Boot drifted out of a nearby deckchair.

"Cheers," Snape slurred, sinking unsteadily into the vacated deckchair. Its fabric immediately turned black at his touch, and his robes hiked up to show his pallid bony knees.

(Behind him, Hermione considered Terry Boot for a moment, and then said, "_Coges Poterentur_." An obscene drawing appeared on the boy's face in marker. She smirked.)

Snape leaned close to Neville, who recoiled from the cloud of alcohol that constituted the man's breath, and spoke: "I am Snape, the potions master. That means I have something called a Mastery in Potions. Oh yes, there's certainly a world of higher education beyond Hogwarts, that I never told _you_ about. Apprenticeships and whatnot. You're the Longbottom boy, right? Jolly good. Have the makings of a fine whatsit. Lizard. Footstool." He paused, and belched. "...Wizard. Mm. I am Snape, the potions master."

The friends sat in silence as the greasy professor managed to stand again, and wandered off. Along the way, he accosted students and Hogsmeade citizens to explain, "I am Snape, the potions master."

"He's never been the same since that time with the Potions accident which turned him into an infant we all had to look after," Hermione said, shaking her bushy head sadly.

"The one that also left him cursed to sneer multiple times per sentence or his ears turn green and fall off?"

"The very same."

"Pity."

"Pity," Ron agreed, taking a drink.

"I hear that now that he's out of the Death Eaters and the Order and all that, he and Flitwick are planning to retire to a little cottage in Tuscany."

"...Huh."

"Takes all sorts."

"Guess so. Oh look, the Golden Trio's here."

Hermione frowned, glancing at Blaise Zabini, Dean Thomas, and Angelina Johnson as they picked their way across the crowded town square. "Don't call them that, Ron. It's horribly offensive, not to mention crass."

The three kept moving, looking for a free spot not too close to either the deluge of music that was still pumping forth from the conjured stage, or the mobile mountain of ice that was cooling people's drinks.

"But they're blinged out! Look!" Even as he spoke, Dean nodded his gold-earringed head enthusiastically above his golden necklace that showed today's date, and shouted, "We're racial stereotypes, yo!"

"I don't care. The fact of the matter-" Harry tuned Hermione and Ron out as they began to bicker. He stared after Zabini, trying to recall why-

"Oh, _yeah_," Harry remembered. "He used to be that quiet, cute Italian girl before that Potions Accident in fourth year."

Ron stopped arguing to bellow in laughter. "You thought Blaise Zabini was cute?"

"I did too," Neville admitted, saving Harry from having to move the conversation along with a _Mobilitopic_ spell.

Ron eyeballed Nev. "Mate, with the number of Potions Accidents you've had, and the unremarkably enormous rate at which they apparently have incredible otherwise-unheard-of magical effects, you're lucky you're the same _species_ you started out as, let alone gender."

"Ah. Uh. Well, actually..."

Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Luna looked at him.

The organiser of the Hogwarts Defence Collective blushed under their scrutiny. "You know how my sole defining characteristic, which we are by ancient magic bound to mention at least once a week, is how I'm good at Herbology?"

They all nodded. "Oh you're the best, mate," Ron gushed. "_So_ good. Nnnnnggg yeahhh."

"Well we were working with Bowtruckle ligaments and there was Another Potions Accident and now I'm part Bowtruckle. Affinity for plants and all."

"So you're a _cheater_," Ron breathed in delight.

Hermione ignored him. "When was this, Neville?"

"Oh... The same week that those wingéd, illuminatéd, Ice Maidens from the Arctic tundras marched into the school and stole Daphne Greengrass away to be their Queen."

"So right around when Ginny had her goth phase and started calling herself Virginia?" Ron looked at his sister's empty seat. "Wonder if that had something to do with her turning herself into a lich."

Harry shuddered a little, remembering how Ginny had secretly remained host to Tom's spirit after the Incident With The Diary In The Chamber. Fortunately, that meant that the basilisk fang which had pierced it must logically have been host to Ginny's spirit, and Neville had clumsily tripped and impaled Ginny's body with _that_, which meant that everything sorted itself out in the end, except for the bit where Ginny started wearing black lace and too much eyeshadow for a while, and there was an unspoken agreement never to mention that again in her presence.

"Well, she did use Tom Riddle's diary as her phylactery," Harry said. "On the end of a bit of string. That still creeps me out."

"Yeah. I think I speak for all of us when I say that all books are awful in every way." Ron glanced slyly at Hermione, who refused to rise to the bait.

"What about when we found and read those seven increasingly-lengthy novels which supposedly told your life story?" she asked instead, giving him a triumphant look.

"Ah, the Ron Weasley series," said Ron appreciatively in recollection. "You're right, I _did_ like those. On the whole. Can't say I really enjoyed the second one, Ron Weasley And The Forest Full Of Giant Fucking Spiders."

Neville coughed something that sounded suspiciously like "Ron Weasley And The Time-travelling Adventure That He Mostly Missed Out On." Ron threw a bottlecap at him.

"Where'd we find those, anyway?" Harry answered. "We were on the run, right?"

"I think it was Parkinson Mansion."

"Wasn't it Malfoy Manor?" Luna wondered.

"Pretty sure it was Avery Aviary, actually."

"I thought it was Nott Manor?"

"No, the Nott family isn't pureblood, so they only get a hovel..."

"Oh, that's right, I meant Crabbe Castle."

They all nodded. Harry thought back to some of the other Death Eater homes they'd raided. "Hard to believe the Lestranges lived in a tarnished and incense-blackened lamp, lost in endless drifts of sand, thanks to their shared magical creature blood. What were we talking about?"

"The book series," Luna said, smiling happily as she watched Seamus Finnegan struggle to put up a deckchair that kept closing on his fingers.

"Oh yeah. Aww, all those books were such rubbish. They never even mentioned that the reason Dumbledore keeps Filch on is he's a male Veela, or how Mrs Norris is Hagrid's animagus form, which is why you never see them in the same room together, or the way wards totally exist and aren't made up and are somehow related to the study of Ancient Runes just like spell creation is a real thing related to Arithmancy," Harry said all in one breath.

"And the fifth book glosses over how Pigwidgeon secretly became a white phoenix," Ron said, petting a tiny owl-shaped lump under his robes.

Sirius, who had been a black dog dozing at their feet curled up with his nose pressed against his own nethers, untransformed to indignantly add, "And I died in that one! Unfair!"

"Well, you _did_ die."

"Oh, yeah. Good thing the Veil was actually a portal to the lost city of Atlantis, so I could come back."

"You drowned! Your waterlogged corpse wasn't much good for us when Voldemort showed up at the Ministry!"

Sirius winced and shifted back into his animagus form. Harry knew he didn't really like to talk about the circumstances of his resurrection, so made sure to bring it up at every possible moment.

"Remarkable, that true love's kiss could bring you back like that," Harry continued loudly. "And Remus! Who'd have thought it? Let alone that it would cure his lycanthropy by turning him into a regular old wolf animagus, at the same time? Kind of a miracle all round, really."

Hermione made a noise of disagreement. "As much as I enjoy seeing you make your fleabag godfather slink under a chair with his tail between his legs, in the interests of keeping the record accurate I should point out that the true love in question wasn't his and Professor Lupin's, just some generic true love that was hanging around making things awkward after we broke all those hourglasses full of it in the Department of Mysteries."

"Oh yeah. The room for quote unquote studying love." Harry frowned. "And the unisex loo just next to it, with the vending machine that dispensed teens' reproductive health pamphlets. That was weird."

"_Anyway_. That's the reason Tonks was only with Professor Lupin briefly," Hermione continued loftily. "Filch and his crack team got the spill cleaned up and everything went back to normal."

Harry nodded, remembering all those House Elves in hazmat suits marching in lockstep, mops shouldered. He raised his bottle in a toast as the raucous crowd began cheering Umbridge's kegstand.

"Prrrretty sure Tonks was actually just in it for the werewolf thing," Ron said argumentatively after the partygoers' cheers died down. "No more tragic curse, no more Nymphadora."

Hermione shrugged. "Maybe."

"Mmm. I know that werewolves're a devil in the – well, anyway," Luna said, glancing at Hermione. "We should all go visit Tonks and Percy in their new place at the dragon reserve."

"I would, but I don't think my Magical Guardian would let me," the muggleborn said acerbically.

Harry watched Luna wince. Even she would have to admit that that had been one of her sketchier ideas. After the muggle newspaper, The Guardian, had somehow found out about and acquired the Quibbler, and Luna had been sacked. In a fit of spite the young journalist had enchanted an entire evening's run of the muggle rag, using a unique blend of Fidelius, Origami Golem, and Howler Charms.

Thousands of copies were now loose in the wizarding world, passing completely unseen for long periods of time until they reached the point in their life-cycle where they latched onto people and acting like flustered mother hens whenever their adopted children ventured into the slightest hint of danger. In the final phase, they'd suddenly divebomb their charge, bursting into flames and screaming the financial news at full volume.

The overprotective Magical Guardians had been declared a public health menace. The last Harry heard, the recently-elected Minister Binns was scrambling to assemble a task force competent enough to take on Luna's incredibly complex enchantments. Harry and his chums in the Platinum Sextuplet were (with the exception of Hermione) more amused by it than anything, and Dumbledore had retired to work on the cutting edge of candy development.

He'd been making great strides, too – Harry saw the ancient sorcerer himself was in a Gryffindor gold deckchair right next to the stage, and there was a long queue of people waiting eagerly for the 'blood quills' he was passing out. And the ex-Headmaster's phenomenally successful combination of sugar quills and blood pops weren't even his greatest achievement – Harry had it straight from the horse's mouth that the big thing next autumn would be Albus Botts' Every Flavour Cockroach Cluster.

From what Harry could see, Dumbledore was announcing by turns that he was very wise, very inscrutable, very senile, and overtly evil. The constant twinkle of his eyes was providing an impromptu strobing light show effect in tune with the Weird Sisters' instrumentals.

Fred and George Weasley pushed past the queue levitating huge bowls with a natty _Mobilipatinae_ spell, emptying what appeared to be liquorice-flavoured lemon drops at Dumbledore's feet.

"Twins not looking happy, huh," Neville observed.

Ron sniggered. "They're worried about explaining things to their muggle girlfriends."

Fred and George had got caught in a dangerous feedback loop where they'd started finishing larger and larger parts of each others' sentences, eventually looping back around to the beginning again. Now they couldn't work out how to fix it. Harry knew they were getting increasingly worried: Fred had confided in him the other day that he'd eaten some bad curry the previous night and George was the one in the bog all morning.

"Fred started talking in _both_ their voices the other day," Ron added happily, before catching sight of Professor Sprout, tipping his hat to her with a burp, and staggering to his feet. "I'm off to cadge snacks from Dumbledore. Anyone want anything?"

"Nope."

"No thanks," Harry shrugged, letting the copper sun beat down on his face. Somewhere in the babbling laughter of the crowd there was a short scream as someone stood too close to the everburning fireworks.

"Aight." Ron strolled off arm-in-arm with Sprout, meeting Snape and Draco similarly arranged. The two godparent-godson duos exchanged absent-minded high fives as they passed.

"Is that Adrian?" Neville asked, nodding towards the velvet cone someone had left dangling rakishly over the granite brow of the Statue of Secrecy.

"Adr- oh, the Sorting Hat? No, I think it's Stanley." Harry was referring of course to the Unsorting Hat, which played the central role in the traditional ceremony where graduating Hogwarts students were held down and had their House forcibly removed.

Neville's eyes soon drifted to someone else in the throng. "Has Susan always had red hair? And... the rest?" His hands described a pattern in the air like two pairs of Bludgers flying in formation.

"No, she got caught between a couple of rogue MaleGaze curses," Luna lilted (referring to the spell Patrocles' Malevolent Gaze). "She also has an invisible extra gorilla arm with octopus sucker fingers. Really good for opening jars."

"That's so fucking hot," Neville admitted. "I wonder if she puts out."

"Don't make me have the gigaicehydra throw you in the lake," Harry felt compelled to warn him, knowing what a notorious womaniser his friend had become.

"Oh, fine. I'm still going to try to get her Floo Number though," the Longbottom scion added.

"Who, Bones? Missed your chance there, mate," Ron said, coming back clutching fistfuls of candy. "I hear her and Griphook are a thing now. Enchanted Red Vine?"

"Oh you know it," Harry said, accepting the delicious treat with glee.

"Give me a regular chocolate frog any day," Neville said mournfully. "Dumbledore is ruining candy for everyone."

Harry narrowed his eyes, meaningfully laying his fingers across one of his wands. "Don't you dare impugn the honour of the Scarlet Vine."

"Alright alright. I take it back, Harry." Neville was one of the few people Harry didn't insist call him by his true title, The Right Honourable And Mighty Lord Black-Potter-Peverell-Black-Black-Black. Apart from being a chum, there was the little matter of the Ancient Alliance between the families Potter and Longbottom; specifically, Harry's dad had been Neville's gran's boot boy.

Harry made a mental note to have his family tapestry restored, and then tuned back in to what Ron was now saying to Hermione about Hagrid's crucial part in levelling Voldemort's volcano fortress.

"All I'm saying is that it doesn't _matter_ that we found out he really _was_ the Heir of Slytherin, and also reincarnation of Morgan Le Fey and Archivist of the Atlanteans an' all that. He had our man Grawp!"

Harry shuddered in recollection. He was normally not someone for appearances and propriety, but there had been something fundamentally affronting about the arcane masteries of the world's magical ancestors being channelled through that pink umbrella. Especially since Ron was right, and Hagrid's giant brother had done considerably more damage to the island stronghold, the world-wrecking lost magicks of the demigods notwithstanding.

He sighed and stretched out in his deckchair. Life was good.

By the time Ron and Hermione had settled (with a round of Wizards' Thumb War) their argument about whether it had been ethically permissible to conscript Grawp into battle in the first place, Ginny had returned from the bathroom. "Hi guys, what did I miss?"

It was a good and brilliantly sunny day. Harry gazed up at the sky, sipped his ale and reflected back on the previous hundred and fifty paragraphs. "...Surprisingly little."

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